


"You Haven't Changed, You Can't."

by Alkeni



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Episode: s04e14 Release, F/M, Gen, Includes Gifs, Meta, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Scene Analysis, relationship analysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 01:43:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6732907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alkeni/pseuds/Alkeni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which I overanalyze the 'You haven't changed, you can't," speech Wesley gives Faith during the hunt for Angelus, with a very Faithsley lens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"You Haven't Changed, You Can't."

Okay, so recently, I did a little post where I totally fanned out over Faith and Wesley’s exchange in Release (4x14). You can read it [here](http://alkenifanfiction.tumblr.com/post/139747645447/my-favorite-faithwesley-exchange), but in this post, I’d like to consider this conversation and this scene more seriously. Because yes, it totally sets my Faithsley shipping off every time I see it, the fact of the matter is, it is _because_  of these scene and others like it that I ship them. Its the stuff you realize on the more deeper consideration that makes these two such an awesome ship, in all their beautiful, fucked up, damaged, imperfect, kind of crazy glory.

So, let’s consider this scene. The link also includes the relevant dialogue, but for recap: The scene picks up after Faith and Wesley went through the Orpheus Den, and Wesley stuck his knife into the junkie’s sholder to force her to talk, to tell them what she knew about Angelus.  They’re leaving through the back door, and Faith, for understandable reasons, is thrown and bothered by Wesley just straight up torturing the girl.  
  
Wesley’s reply is astonishment that she suddenly has a problem with torture, and Faith’s reaction is one that we as the viewer can totally grasp and accept: “   **“Yeah, well, it's not me anymore. You know that.”**  
  
And this is where the scene gets good. Because while Faith has spent the last three seasons crawlig out the darkness she mired herself into, Wesley has spent the last three (especially the last one) slipping right into the muck. They haven’t reversed positions - Faith isn’t to where Wesley was, and Wesley isn’t to where Faith was (Wesley never shows any particular glee in torture, whereas Faith _enjoyed_ hurting him.) We _know_ that Faith has changed. And we thought Wesley knew too - he let her out of prison, for god’s sake! But... do you every really move past that? Wesley’s baptism in blood was... well, it was one of the defining moments for his development as a character. He had several after that, but it was getting tortured by Faith, nearly abandoning Angel out of resentment (Even with Angel making it out of his betrayal ‘alive’ as a condition, Wesley had to know helping the Council get Faith would be a point of no return for his partnership/friendship with the vampire) and then deciding to trust him even on this, to turn once and for all on the Council... that is what set him on the path for everything else. 

Faith, in a very realy sense, _made_ the modern Wesley.  
  
So here he is, throwing in her face what she did:

(All credit for this gift and all other gifs used in this post to @mindycollette, with the original post being here: [Link](http://mindycollette.tumblr.com/post/13862263509))

How many times did Faith feature in his nightmares? How long did he rememer that pain every time he saw those scars? How vividly does he remember? He’s drawing on all that and shoving it all into Faith’s face - the ugliness she wants to avoid. In Episode 1x19, “Sanctuary”, when Angel mentions that the popcorn she’s making is Wesley’s, her response, in contrast to her ‘I’ll pay Cordelia back’ is:   **"Oh, maybe we - just don't mention it then."**  
  
Its really, of course, because Faith doesn’t want to face Wesley after what she did to him - who would - but it speaks to something really core to Faith’s coping mechanisms, that are just as true here as they were three seasons ago: Faith’s coping mechanism is to... well, _not._ (Incidentally, this is probably one of the reasons Faith resonates with so many people). Faith’s coping is to avoid it. Run away. Avaoid the problem. She’s better now than she was, this is true, but still... Faith doesn’t want to think about what she did. She doesn’t want to be confronted with it. And Wesley forces her to - _while_ reminding her that she wasn’t just causing him pain. She was doing everything she could to cause him _all the pain_. She went out of her way to make sure he suffered as much pain as she could deliver in the time she had. And yes, part of it was because she was trying to drive Angel over the edge so he’d kill her - Faith was trying to committ Suicide by Cop here, after all.  
  
Wesley seems to be being deliberately nasty to her - deliberately trying to make her upset, hurt her by using the thing she hates the most about herself - all the shitty things she did, and how they felt and the fear she could go back to that - and rubbing her nose in it. We find out at the end of the scene, its more complicated than that, but still. And we know that this is how Faith feels from just a few minutes before, when the Junkie goes “Stop it, you’re hurting me!” because of that look of ‘oh my god, what did I just do’ on her face as she lets the Junkie go. Faith is horrified at just hitting the girl and pinning her against the wall.   
  
It is this next bit that _really_ gets me though. Its this one line and its delivery that I will always just... completely freak out over, as a Faithsley shipper. I mean, I love the whole exchange, but this one line:

**“You think I’d hurt you again?”**

Now, maybe it’s just me, but there is just something about this line, and the way she delivers it. It feels like there’s so much more to it, so much more behind it. I mean, if I heard this line in isolation, without any context, without any knowledge of who thee characters are or their situation or anything. Just Eliza Dushku saying  **“You think I’d hurt you again?”** the way she said it here...   
  
It sounds like someone trying to convince their ex to give them a second chance. Seriously, go and listen to it. That line is in this video, starting at ~0:45 to ~0:48. Just listen to it in isolation. [Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRN1vIJigic)   
  
It sounds to me, to my ears, like someone saying to their ex ‘I know what I did to you, I know it hurt you. It’s never going to happen again, you know it what. Do you really think I’d hurt you again?’  
  
And does she say that? I mean, its not ‘you’d think i’m gonna do that again?’ or anything general. It’s not an issue of ‘do you think I’m gonna go evil torturer again?’ It’s  **“You think I’d hurt** _you_ **again.”**  
  
Maybe it’s just my Faithsley shiping talking (though its scenes like this that are the _reason_  I ship Faithsley in the first place.), but it feels like the ‘you’ is the central part of that. That there’s something in particular - that of all the people I hurt, Wesley, you’re the last one I’d ever hurt again. The closest she gets to having this attitude toward anyone else is Buffy, and I don’t quite the same level of ;of all the people I hurt’ from her interactions with Buffy. That there’s something special about what she did to Wesley, and how important it is to her that he know she’s not that anymore, that she wouldn’t do that to him,  that she wouldn’t hurt _him_  again. The Faithsley feels in just that one line, and the way Eliza Dushku delivers it and... it’s just so... its just so perfect.  
  
I could probably gush for several more paragraphs about all the potential deeper layers and minor and major headcanons that this line alone gives me. But then I’d never get to the rest of the scene, and there’s still some good stuff to get to here.

The bitter, biting sarcasm of Wesley mocking the idea of her changing, listing off some of the posibiities she could be about to claim is darkly amusing - bitter, sarcastic Wes is at his best in Season 4, and this is just another brilliant manifestation - but he’s not just being a sarcastic ass here. He’s working her - as he did above, he’s going right for the jugular. Faith _just_  pulled back from hurting someone - even as minor as hitting them. She’s recoiling from her own violence, because its reminding her of what she did, what she was before. Wesley knows that - and so he suggests that no, you haven’t changed Faith. This is _who you are_. He knows exactly - _exactly_ \- what to say to get to her the most. He understands where Faith is - because he’s dealing with some of the same problems - we see in the next episode, in his discussion with Willow, that he’s not really all that happy with himself, where he’s taken himself, what has happened to him. That he knows he’s maybe gone too far (though Willow, Miss I-Nearly-Destroy-The-World-After-Flaying-A-Man herself, kind of dashes that notion, as [@carry-on-my-wayward-wesley](http://tmblr.co/mATZ5vshQnpi19VBsOI83VA) discusses here: [Link](http://carry-on-my-wayward-wesley.tumblr.com/post/129294189467/but-like-this-is-such-an-important-scene)) He’s not dealing with the same issues or to the same degree as Faith, but he gets the basic - because Faith and Wesley are so similar now, are so close in mindsets, experiences and approaches, in so many ways.

Let’s think back to Episode 3x15 of Buffy for a moment. “Consequences.” One of the things that is a huge issue in that episode is that Faith seems to be experiencing no remorse for killing Finch. As she says to Buffy  **‘I don’t care!’**  
  
Faith - at least, this is my take on it all - was thinking the way she did because she desperately didn’t want to think of herself as a bad person. So what she did couldn’t have been bad - and then Angel convinced her what she did was bad… but got interrupted before he could get to the next step. The point isn’t to rehash consequences, but to get at some more of Faith’s mindset, and why Wesley is choosing his words like that. Because deep down, some part of Faith always wonders if that’s true. If she is sick, because of who she is, what she’s done. If there is some rot in her. If what she’s done really does define her. Can she really ever make it right? And Wesley, who  has already played on two sets of her insecurities adds a third. 

I put these two together because here he’s playing on the same insecurity, the same fear of Faith’s - that no one trusts her. That there really is no one in the world for her, in any sense. That she’ll never have friends. That she’ll never be able to form a real connection with another person. The only person left that’s never given up on her is Angel - and he’s completely gone. She didn’t take the shot on Angelus earlier, which is what this is all about for Wesley, as we see at the end. Wesley is trying to goad Faith, get her to embrace just enough of her darker, more violent self, so she can beat Angelus. But Faith is shying from that. Not just because, as discssed above, she’s afraid of  that part of herself and what it means, but also because Angel is the _only_  person at that point who has never given up on her. So not only is Wesley trying to **piss her off** , but he’s also trying to make her more open to be willing to go all the way. He doesn’t want Angel dusted either, if he has a choice (as he said in the previous episode, that’s why it had to be Faith), but also knows that the only way to win against Angelus is to not hold back, to be willing to kill him if you have to (which is the exact scenario Buffy faced in 2x22 (”Becoming, Part 2″) of her show - now that she _was_  fully willing to kill Angel, she was actually able to beat him.   
  
Wesley is implicitly telling her that even _Angel_  doesn’t trust her. Because ‘no one’ means even Angel doesn’t. And if Angel doesn’t trust her, than he’s no longer the one guy who never gave up on her - and so she can go all the way, can be willing to kill him if that’s what it takes.  
  
And again - Faith’s big hang-up is trust. We see that in some of her interactions with Robin on Buffy, we see it in Season 3 of Buffy all over the place. She has serious trust issues - and she wants people to trust her in turn. Faith, like most people, desperately wants to have people she trusts, and that trust her. And he’s telling her that she’ll never have that. Ever.

And here it is. The pay-off. Wesley has been goading her this entire scene, trying to get her to embrace her violence, her anger, her rage. And it works - he’s read her like a book, he knows exactly how to get her to react. Wesley is a very, very smart and astute man. We don’t always see his ability to read people (because sometimes he really can be dense), but he’s actually pretty good at it, and here’s a perfect example. He’s played Faith like a fiddle. The Arch-Pragmatist.  
  
He’s willing to cross whatever line, violate whatever trust, be as terrible a person as he has to be to get the job done. And its here that we the viewer know for sure that Wesley doesn’t mean what he just said. For example, if he thought she was sick, rotted to the core, he wouldn’t have needed to goad her like this - because she’d be what he needed anyway. If he didn’t trust her to hesitate before actually smashing that gun into his face/head, he wouldn’t have goaded her. If he thought she should be put down, he’d never have given her the opportunity to strike. Wesley was playing her to get the reaction he needed. Wesley has, in essence, forgiven her, in a way. Maybe not in the specifics, but having been through what he’s been though, Wesley understands Faith on a level he never did before.  
  
Wesley is willing to be the bad guy. He’s willing to risk Faith injuring him (trust or not, he has to know it’s possible.) and risk completely alienating her - after having already alienated everyone else in his life - to get the job done.  
  
Faith, in turn, is still lost. Still damaged. Still unsure of herself. Still trying to move on from what she was, to make up for what she did, while altogether not sure if she ever can. She wants Wesley, _in particular_ , to know that she won’t hurt him again, she wants Wesley, _in particular_ , to understand that she’s changed - to reaffirm that she has, because she needs _someone_  to.   
  
This scene is masterfully written. Its brilliantly acted. Its choreographed perfectly. Just… every little detail about this scene is so fucking perfect it hurts. These two broken, lost souls, mired in darkness, seeking light while knowing and fearing they’ll stay in darkness. Seeking light while knowing and fearing that they won’t walk into it because in part they _like_  the darkness.   
  
There’s a lot to this ship that’s fucked up. There’s a lot to these two people that is fucked up. But there’s also so much more. These two broken people could be what could fix the other. Could be what could stabalizes them both. Because both of them have been through the same things, and are both trying to survive, stay sane, and keep their heads above water.  
  
And that is why I love this scene. And that is why I ship Faith and Wesley, in all their fucked-up, problematic glory.

**Author's Note:**

> [My Blog](Alkenifanfiction.tumblr.com)


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